


Too Dark, Too Bright

by natacup82



Series: They Weren't There [1]
Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-29
Updated: 2010-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-16 19:37:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natacup82/pseuds/natacup82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After John goes to the future Sarah starts to see things. For <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/hc_bingo/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/hc_bingo/"></a><b>hc_bingo</b> prompt: hallucinations. Spoilers for the entire series and the first Terminator movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Dark, Too Bright

Sarah has always had nightmares, dreams that make sleep seem like the last thing she’d ever want to do. She’s gotten used to them as just another part of her life, another thing that comes with all of the trauma and loss and desperate fighting to protect her son.

But three weeks after John makes the leap into the future, after she doesn’t follow him, she starts to see things.

It starts small, something that most people wouldn’t even notice. She’s walking home from the supermarket and passes her old roommate. The roommate a Terminator killed the first time they came looking for her, before she met Kyle or knew anything about destiny.

It’s such a small, stupid thing that she brushes it aside, figures its just someone who looks like her and keeps on walking. With John gone nobody is coming after her except the FBI and even they can’t be bothered to care.

Two weeks later she walks into the house and Derek is sitting at the dining room table cleaning a gun.

Sarah is back out the door and almost to the car before she realizes Derek still had a hole from the bullet that killed him in the middle of his forehead.

She takes a few deep breaths and goes back into the house. It’s empty.

*

A few days later Sarah walks into the kitchen and Charlie is standing at the sink washing dishes. She stops, whispers, “you’re not real,” to herself a few times and tries to get breakfast.

“You can’t just ignore me you know; I died for you,” Charlie says, turning to watch her get milk out of the refrigerator.

Sarah says, “You are not here. This is just another hallucination.” She tries not to stare at the blood all over his shirt, at all of the bullet holes in his chest.

“Keep telling yourself that.”

Sarah turns to say something else but he’s gone. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding and sits down at the table to have breakfast.

*

Derek is back that night, back at the table cleaning a gun. After a day of seeing her mother covered in blood in a drugstore screaming for help, of seeing Riley at a bus stop fighting something or someone Sarah can’t see.

It’s not even a surprise that he’s back. This is just going to be a new thing she has to deal with, along with the nightmares and paranoia, the constant fear of cancer.

Derek starts talking as soon as she’s fully in the house, says, “I don’t get why you’re here. John is somewhere in the future with nothing but metal to watch his back. What kind of mother are you?”

He doesn’t move off the couch but his voice follows her; into the bathroom, into her bedroom, into the backyard.

Finally Sarah gets frustrated and stomps into the living room and yells at him to shut the hell up if he doesn’t have any solutions.

Derek isn’t there; but John is and any words Sarah can think to say die in her throat. She can’t look at him, can’t stand the guilt or the fear that he’s here because somewhere in the future he’s dead and she wasn’t there to protect him.

John says, “Mom.”

And Sarah whispers, “No,” grabs her keys and leaves the house.

*

Sarah drives around aimlessly letting the hours tick by. She calls Ellison, sets up a meet for three am far enough away that she has something to focus on.

He’s already seated, in a booth by the windows so they can both keep an eye out just in case, by the time she makes it to the diner.

She’s barely had a chance to slid into the booth before he says, “I’ve been seeing things. People.”

Sarah almost smiles, says, “Me too,” and then, "this seems like a conversation that would be better with pie," signaling the waitress and already feeling a little better because at least she’s not alone with this.


End file.
